Month: September 2024

Is it fair of AOC to call the Green Party “predatory”?

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Attacks by Democratic partisans against Green Party candidates — and Republican partisans against Libertarian Party candidates — is standard fodder during any presidential election.

But the tradition took an interesting twist recently when Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) eviscerated Green Party presidential candidate, Jill Stein. The attack took many off guard, given that AOC is arguably the Democratic member of Congress most closely aligned with the Green’s platform.

In a recent TikTok video, AOC said of Stein, “If all you do is show up once every four years, you are not serious. To me, it does not read as authentic. It reads as predatory.” Continue Reading →

US/NATO missiles bombing Russia could lead to nuclear war

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I usually look forward to writing this blog. Not so much when the topic is nuclear war.

Ok, so now that I’ve lost half my audience (I get it: who wants to discuss nuclear war?), let me ask the remaining half to indulge the urgency of this message.

Not my message, so much, but the message of Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, founded in 1945 by Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer, and others. The work of this prestigious organization includes the Doomsday Clock in response to the threat of nuclear war and other existential dangers.

Earlier this year, the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board wrote that, “in large part because of Russian threats to use nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine” they were moving the Clock to 90 seconds to midnight, “the closest to global catastrophe it has ever been.”

If we were 90 seconds from global catastrophe before President Biden said he might allow Ukraine to launch long-range missiles deep inside Russia, the Clock certainly has advanced further in the wrong direction.
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The prominent Iowa Republican trying to shut down a popular music venue

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So, what’s this about a prominent Iowa Republican trying to shut down Wooly’s, the popular East Village live-music venue? The building next to Wooly’s is owned by Chuck Larson — a former state lawmaker, former chair of the Republican Party of Iowa, and former US ambassador to Latvia. Pretty influential, well-connected guy.

Larson’s real estate houses several tenants, including the LS2 Group — one of the state’s most prominent lobbying firms, founded by Larson.

Wooly’s and LS2 have been neighbors since 2012 without any conflicts. Two years ago, Larson rented space to Kuvare, a Chicago-based investment firm worth $19 billion. According to The Business Record, Kuvare plans to continue bringing in staff over the next 3 years. I imagine that rental agreement has to be pretty lucrative for Larson. Continue Reading →

Why I feel I’ve lived in three centuries

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What’s this about me feeling like I’ve lived in three centuries? I’d like to tell you that I’m older than I look, but that would put me at a minimum of 125 years old, and no one’s buying that.

I was blessed (and occasionally cursed) with a matriarchal Irish grandmother, who arrived in New York in the 1920s. She made sure our family on both sides of the pond remained well connected. In 1966 at age eight, I made my first of a couple dozen trips to Ireland. All told, I’ve spent about two years of my life there.

We still own the land and house where my grandmother was raised. It’s around 25 acres, much of it now planted in oak trees.

Rural Ireland in the 1960s and 70s was more like rural America in the late 1800s and early 1900s. During my earliest trips to stay with my uncles in rural Roscommon County, there was no electricity, no running water, no bathroom, no cars. Continue Reading →

Ed eats crow on RFK prediction

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To eat crow is defined as “admitting having been proven wrong after taking a strong position.” Before I figuratively ingest a healthy portion of said bird, I’ll remind my readers of a few times I got it right.

In an article published in Bleeding Heartland in August 25, 2016, I said, “I think this whole election is so volatile and so many people dislike Clinton that it could go that way. I mean, Trump could win.”

In my May 17, 2023, blog, I wrote, “Democrats should be in panic mode about Biden’s poll numbers. The way things are going, Joe Biden is going to lose to Donald Trump in November, 2024.”

A year later, Biden’s poll numbers were only getting worse. In my June 26 blog, the day before the historic debate between Biden and Trump, I wrote, “Pundits and commentators will, however, rate Biden’s performance somewhere between mediocre and a total bomb. Over the course of the next two months, the Party Elites will roll out Biden’s chosen successor.”

While I think I can make a good case that I read the political tea leaves correctly more often than not, I was way off when I wrote in my November 9, 2023 blog, “my prediction as to who will win the presidency: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.”
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